Other forms: peals
A peal is a loud ringing of bells — or a burst of laughter or thunder. All three arrive in waves.
Bell ringing has the precise sense, since a full peal is a specific sequence of thousands of changes that takes hours to ring and is a real achievement. The figurative uses follow the sound, so peals of laughter and a peal of thunder both roll rather than crack. Take care with peel, which means to remove a skin and sounds identical, and which is by far the commoner word.
Middle English
pele
English, today
peal
From Middle English pele, peil, probably an apheretic variant of Middle English apel, appel, from Old French apel (“an appeal; pealing of bells”). Compare appeal.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA
Practised in A Man Called Ove, A Song of Ice and Fire
First appears in chapter 22 of A Man Called Ove.
Practise this word